RAAVANA-1, first ever Sri Lankan satellite launched
Posted on April 18th, 2019
Courtesy Adaderana
The first ever Sri Lankan satellite, RAAVANA-1, was successfully launched into space at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia today (18).
The satellite bordered to the Antares rocket carrying Cygnus cargo spacecraft and it is bound to reach the International Space Station (ISS).
RAAVANA-1 is set to be launched into orbit by the end of May or the outset of June, subsequently, it is expected to orbit the Earth for approximately 15 times per day and its speed is estimated at 7.6 km per second.
RAAVANA-1 is a research satellite built by two Sri Lankan engineers named Tharindu Dayaratne and Dulani Chamika, from the University of Peradeniya and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies.
The satellite was designed and built at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Japan and is 1,000 cubic cm in size and weighs 1.1 kg.
RAAVANA-1 was officially handed over to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Feb. 18.
The satellite is expected to fulfill five missions including the capturing of pictures of Sri Lanka and its surrounding regions.
The RAAVANA-1 is expected to orbit 400 km away from earth. It will have a minimum lifespan of one and a half years
April 18th, 2019 at 9:10 pm
While congratulating the two youngsters from SL, I would like to ask what is the contribution of Arthur C. Clerk Space Center in this project. Dulani Chamika who does most of talking is not even a product of a Srl Lankan university. They said their contribution is only providing the coding for the satellite’s various functions. They said the hardware are not their’s. There were two other identical cubes paraded in front of two other parties one of which was Nepal. I think the course corrections, measuring and storing data etc. can also be done with simple inexpensive devices like Raspberry pi or Arduino that can fit into this 10cm cube. The position can be obtained very accurately with the help of GPS system that is stationed 20200 km above the earth.
Our neighbor India has sent their Rama to land successfully in Jupiter or Mars so many million kms away and then controlled it from earth to carry out experiments. It should be a disgrace to the name of our great king Rawana to name this minute gadget built with Japan’s technology after him and send it to orbit by hitch hiking yet another countrie’s rocket.
Arthur C. Clerk Center, could you please explain what you have been doing all these years with tax payers money?.